1,945
Views
59
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Review Article

The World Health Organization’s hearing-impairment grading system: an evaluation for unaided communication in age-related hearing loss

Pages 12-20 | Received 06 Apr 2018, Accepted 25 Aug 2018, Published online: 15 Oct 2018
 

Abstract

Objective: This review evaluated the data from five datasets having pure-tone thresholds and functional measures of speech communication from relatively large groups of older adults to evaluate the validity of the proposed new World Health Organisation (WHO) hearing-impairment grading system, referred to here as WHO-proposed.

Design: This was a review of studies identified from the literature having both pure-tone audiometry and functional measures of speech communication from relatively large samples of older adults.

Study sample: Three population or population-sample datasets and two clinical datasets were identified with access provided to de-identified data for five of these six studies.

Results: As the WHO-proposed hearing-impairment grade progressed from “normal” to “severe” (insufficient data from older adults were available for the “profound” category), each step in this progression led to a significant difference in functional communication relative to the preceding step. Cohen’s d effect sizes were moderate to very large between each successive step on the WHO-proposed hearing-impairment grading scale, with some exceptions for the step from “normal” to “mild/slight” grades.

Conclusions: The WHO-proposed hearing-impairment grading system, recently developed through expert opinion and adopted by WHO, is validated here with evidence from studies of functional communication in older adults.

Acknowledgements

This review would not have been possible without the assistance of several individuals who either provided access to the de-identified data for this evaluation (B. Gopinath for the Blue Mountains Hearing Study, Richard Wilson for the Wilson Citation2011 VA dataset, Victoria Williams-Sanchez and Gary Kidd for the Williams-Sanchez et al. Citation2014 VA dataset) or performed the analyses requested (Karen Cruickshanks and Alex Pinto for the Epidemiology of Hearing Loss Study 2 dataset). Alex Pinto’s effort on these analyses was supported, in part, by a research grant from the National Institute on Aging, R37AG011099. The content is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes on Health.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.